Peter Jones is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.
The cult of American anti-intellectualism is finding its moment in the Republican presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and it is scaring the pants off the Republican Party's traditional elite. They have no one but themselves to blame. Mr. Trump represents the logical conclusion of a hypocritical dance the Republicans have been engaged in for years.
The U.S. is unique in many ways. One of them is a well-documented streak of anti-intellectualism which has long suffused large parts of its society. Remarkably for a country which dominates the rankings of world-leading universities and produces far more than its share of Nobel laureates, large parts of the U.S. mainstream have long been proudly anti-intellectual.
One sees it in the staggering numbers of Americans who believe such things as the notion that dinosaurs and humans inhabited the planet at the same time, despite all evidence to the contrary. Indeed, such people think of this as "so-called evidence," and proof of a conspiracy by intellectuals to rob American society of its spiritual values.
In his 1964 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, Richard Hofstadter explored the remarkable extent to which a set of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science biases have informed social and political life for large numbers of Americans. If anything, these trends have only grown with the rise of social media, and a talk-show culture which prizes ranting arguments over reasoned discussions.
In particular, there is a deep-seated aversion to any claim of expertise in a complex matter. Indeed, there is a rejection of the idea that hard problems really are complex; an underlying sense that the experts' argument that "it's complicated" is just a smokescreen to hide a special interest that doesn't want to solve things which should be solvable.
One encounters it frequently when talking to people (many radio all-news talk show hosts are a favourite) about issues such as the Middle East. They begin their rant with "Well, I'm no expert, but it seems to me that …." They use the "I'm no expert" line proudly as a way of saying that they are not contaminated by any actual knowledge and can therefore cut through the crap and do what's "right." There is a view that deep knowledge of a situation just makes you incapable of "solving" it (or, more sinister, unwilling to do so because of a special interest), whereas a "common sense" approach, based on good old American values, will get it done every time.
The Republican Party has long nurtured this phenomenon for its own political benefit. A cabal of highly sophisticated and deeply cynical Republican political operatives have worked to get large numbers of ill-educated, poor Americans to vote against their interests (e.g. more tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 one per cent) by promoting the view that complicated problems can be solved by cutting taxes, protecting gun rights, blindly supporting the Israeli right wing and getting the government "off our backs."
Except they never really were willing to die in the ditch over any of it. They got elected, went to Washington and did politics just as happily as the Democrats they purported to despise, all the while simultaneously stoking the rhetorical fire against "politics as usual."
The Republicans are now paying the price for many years of this hypocrisy. Donald Trump (and Ted Cruz, to a lesser extent) represent the triumph of hard-core Republican voters who've figured out that the elite of their party has lied to them for many years. They are now bent on electing politicians who really will engage in simple solutions to complicated problems.
This vocal and committed group represents – one hopes – a minority of actual Americans, even if it seems presently to represent enough Republicans to elect Mr. Trump as the party's nominee. If it comes to that, we can hope Mr. Trump will be trounced in the general election.
But Republican insiders fear that the damage he will do to the party in the meantime will be a disaster. That may well be true, but these people should not blame Mr. Trump. They are the ones who created the circumstances that allow him to thrive.
If the Republicans are to regain their old place in American politics, they need to turn their backs on the kind of cynical, manipulative, divisive politics which pander to fear and anti-intellectualism and which Republican back-room superstars like Karl Rove and the late Lee Atwater proudly excelled at (Canadian Conservatives take note; you, too, have been flirting with this approach for the past 10 years).
Perhaps Mr. Trump's lasting legacy will be to finally cause those Republicans who know that "it's complicated" to admit it and ditch the legion of anti-intellectual loonies they've so hypocritically courted for so long. They may split the party for a while by doing so as Mr. Trump and his legions go elsewhere, but their movement will ultimately be healthier for it. So will America. So will we all.